


flesh, blood, silicon

by Wedeck



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:56:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14729499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wedeck/pseuds/Wedeck
Summary: A collection of relatively short, standalone pieces examining the relationship between R9-07 and the ghost man of Vegas.





	1. on stars and dust

“I have a question for you, Mr. House.”

“In the amount of time it took you to say that,” he says, drily, “you could have just asked.”

Greta shoots him a look like she’s been wounded, but it doesn’t last long. With her, smiles are never in shortage. “It doesn’t make sense to ask questions out of the blue.”

“Yes… and that’s something you’ve  _never_  done. But go on.”

Still smiling, she pulls her eyes away from the screen and nods at the sky. “Between the stars in space and the sand on Earth, which one is there more of?”

House’s screen flickers. “Hmm. Interesting.”

The silence that follows is one of the longest Greta’s gotten from House. For close to three minutes there’s nothing but the sound of his tread grinding Mojave dust, the subdued beat of Greta’s boots, and the whisper of a gentle breeze devoid of any trace of Vegas.

Finally, the answer comes. “Stars.”

“Really?” Greta stops and once again directs her gaze skyward. House stops with her. “I guess I can believe it. I see so many of them from here alone. It’s funny to think they’re so big when sand is so...”

She scuffs her boot against the ground, unable to find the word, and the particles scatter in every direction. House shifts back on his wheel, interior whirring as his body recalibrates.

“You’re not an exception there. Most people struggle to interpret the scale of the universe with any meaningful understanding. From your frame of reference, a dozen miles is enough ground covered to call it a day; twelve miles in the context of the universe is, on the other hand, a number so small, so insignificant, it’s hardly a dot. If I were to tell you that, by pre-War estimates, there could be anywhere from two and a half to ten sextillion grains of sand on Earth – two and a half to ten followed by twenty-one zeros – what would you make of it?”

A stunned expression follows this revelation. “You have those numbers on hand?”

“I once considered the question of how many grains of sand were in the Mojave, myself. It was a matter of adjusting the equation.”

“And stars?”

“Ten to two hundred sextillion. Even at a lower estimate, the number of stars in the universe is at least approximately equal to the number of grains of sand on Earth. More realistically, the ratio is likely something to the tune of five to ten stars per grain.”

This time, Greta says nothing, and House’s silence similarly seems manufactured, pressing the significance of the numbers upon her with a weight like gravity pulling sand down to the Earth, or people, or the moon.

Then, after a few moments have passed, he says, “You know, there are potentially more atoms in a single grain of sand than there are even stars.”

Slowly she lowers her eyes again, looking him straight in the screen. She seems more puzzled than amazed this time, and House shifts again, the reaction perhaps unexpected. It doesn’t take long for him to recover, however, to regain his stillness; and Greta, blinking once, then twice, breaks into a smile that seems almost sheepish.

“That’s well and good, Mr. House, but… what’s an atom?”

 


	2. invitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Employment opportunities with House are never in short supply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for an anon ask on Tumblr: "What would houses invitation to Greta have been like?"

“You were right, Victor!” she crowed. “There was a lot in there!”

Victor made a noise that was half disbelief, half approval. “Well, I’ll be.”

She had emerged from the tunnel grinning, a doctor’s satchel in each hand. Behind her, the teeming black sea of giant radscorpions closed rank, the skitter of their legs subsiding as they settled into the hollow where she’d previously stood.

“You really done it.”

“Of course I did!” she said, furrowing her eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I have?”

“Naw, I mean you got through them varmints without a scratch. Jus’ like they were saying.”

She set the bags near him and collapsed on the nearest rock. Unscathed though she was, exhaustion — both from carrying the satchels and traipsing through a poorly ventilated cave — had left its mark on her. Sweat beaded on her brow, and her breaths came deep and hard. “Well — that’s how it is! Radscorpions aren’t so bad, just misunderstood. But — what do you mean? Like who says?”

“The boss man. Mr. House. And Grant, for that matter.” Victor waved a claw in the direction of the north horizon. The bejewelled tower of the Lucky 38 rose out of the desert, staining the sky around it rose where the rest had already turned purple. “He — Mr. House, I mean — said you’d pass with flying colours, and I reckon—”

A series of beeps cut him off mid-sentence.

“—Eeyup,“ he said after a moment. “Reckon he’d say you did, too.”

Greta’s brow descended another quarter inch.

“Flying colours? I was, um, under the impression that it was a tip. A favour. I mean, that’s — that’s what you said, wasn’t it? That there was a stash in here the Followers would find useful…?”

The sepia of Victor’s screen flickered grey, then green. Greta watched the transformation with a certain fascination; she had only seen the switch from one face screen to the other once, and that had been on the Strip when Tommy (the Securitron whose shoulder had been chipped of paint) had been replaced by House, something she had hoped for but not quite expected. This time, the switch was neither, and when Robert Edwin House appeared — House, with his perpetually raised eyebrow and never-quite-satisfied grimace — she couldn’t help but feel like she had been played. Swept into something larger than she’d bargained for, something new, irrevocable.

“Nothing in life comes free,” House said, archly. “You’d do well to remember that.”

Greta watched him, wide-eyed.

“Radscorpion venom is a neurotoxin,” he continued after a beat. “You’re familiar with it, I wager.”

“Yes, sir. With the right dosage you’ll start feeling paralysis — and it spreads gradually. Until your heart stops pumping blood to the rest of you.”

“Indeed. Radscorpions are numerous enough in the Mojave that travelling without at least a vial of antidote is, at minimum, ill-advised. People have died venturing into the nest you just came out of. Excruciatingly.”

Greta nodded.

“The same generally goes for those who enter Fiend territory. Or those travelling unaided and unarmed through a desert where the inhabitants have no…  _moral compunctions_.”

“Moral com-what?”

“Reservations. A conscience, if you will.”

“Oh! I get it.”

“Yet you do so with impunity. In brief, I have use for someone of your abilities. Diplomatic work, principally — you needn’t worry about doing anything diametrically opposed to your purpose.”

Greta frowned. “I work for the—”

“The Followers, yes. I never expected you not to remain with them. What I’m offering you is a position as an independent contractor. Feel free to continue crawling these wastes in your constant pursuit of steadily dwindling medical supplies; you’ll just be doing more substantive things on the side. Besides…”

He pointed to the satchels on the ground with one claw.

“…I may be willing to  _re-negotiate_ some of the terms we discussed the first time… or hear additional proposals.”

Silence. Greta was studying House with a kind of sharpness now, her eyes searching his screen as though his face would actually give her some clue as to his ulterior motives, his intentions.

Nothing.

In absence of a reply, the Securitron began to move off. She surged upward as if to give chase.

“Wait—”

“Until you’re back at the Lucky 38, we have nothing more to discuss," came the brisk answer. "Return to Vegas, don’t, I leave it in your hands. Even Followers make their own decisions.”

With that, the Securitron screen flickered again. House’s visage was gone; in its place was the muted greyscale of a soldier with a broad jaw, cigar dangling from his lips.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” it intoned.

Greta sank back onto the outcropping of rock. “Sure.”

The Securitron whirred, turned itself around, and rolled into the fledgling night. Greta listened until the sound of its treads was the whisper of Mojave wind, of radscorpions jostling each other in a cave too small for their coarse chitinous bodies, of her boots scuffing the ground. Then she sighed, stood up, took a satchel strap in each hand, and turned her feet north.


End file.
